


Snow Capped Romance

by FictionalKnight (Northern_Star)



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-24
Updated: 2009-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-19 03:36:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northern_Star/pseuds/FictionalKnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark Kent unexpectedly runs into Bruce Wayne at a ski resort, and discovers a few things he wasn't aware of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow Capped Romance

**Author's Note:**

> this is a small [and belated] birthday present for [](http://strangeallure.livejournal.com/profile)[**strangeallure**](http://strangeallure.livejournal.com/). She asked for a story where Bruce and Clark met in Canada, and "Bruce showing off his knowledge about fine cuisine and how he can speak French." *giggles* I hope you'll like what I came up with!

Eyes glued to his Blackberry as he typed the last lines of an article for which the deadline was just minutes away, Clark tried to maneuver through the crowd of people standing right outside the convention center. He looked up just in time to avoid a woman, but as he moved aside, he all but rammed his right shoulder into a man's back.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Clark said immediately, as the man turned to look at him.

The moment Clark saw him, however, his embarrassment turned into surprise. There in front of him, dressed in a bright red Kanuk parka, a set of skis and poles resting against his shoulder, stood Bruce Wayne, whose annoyed frown was quickly turning into an amused smile.

"Fancy meeting you here," said the billionaire warmly. "Enjoying the snow?"

Clark frowned at him just slightly. Then, remembering that this wasn't exactly his friend that he was talking to - at least not as long as they were in public - he smiled and said, "Oh, no, I'm here on assignment."

"Here, in Whistler?" asked Bruce in what was supposed to pass for a surprised tone. "What could the Planet possibly need to send you out here for?"

"The G8 summit," Clark explained with a small nod. "It's all very...political. I doubt you'd be interested. But it's newsworthy, and where there's news, well... you know, that's where reporters go." He smiled again, taking pleasure in spelling things out to the falsely clueless socialite.

"Doesn't sound very exciting, if you don't mind my saying." Bruce switched the skis from one shoulder to the other, then said, "You should come and hit the slopes with us, instead."

"I couldn't... I have to work. A reporter's life isn't very glamorous, I'm afraid."

From a few feet away came a young woman's voice. "Bruce! Hurry up, or we'll have to wait in line for the cable car." She made a face as though she couldn't stand the mere thought of actually having to wait for anything.

Clark bit back a chuckle when Bruce rolled his eyes ever so subtly. Without even turning to look in her direction, Bruce waved and replied, "Just a moment, Olivia, darling. I'll be right there."

"You shouldn't make her wait," Clark told him with a lopsided smile. He knew that as much as Bruce appeared to be having the time of his life, he probably wasn't.

Bruce shrugged. "Probably not." He turned and took a few steps toward his lady friend, then stopped abruptly and turned right back again. "Hey, Clark?"

Clark, who was heading away himself, looked over his shoulder before turning back as well. "Yeah?"

"Would you--" Bruce cleared his throat, looking almost nervous. "Would you like to have dinner later?"

"Oh, uh..." Clark blinked, taken a little by surprise. "You shouldn't feel sorry for me. I don't mind being out here on my own. Besides, I'll be working very late anyway."

Bruce frowned, scratching at his temple absently. "No, that wasn't-- I'm not inviting you out of pity." He shrugged. "Maybe I've lost my touch. I, uh, I was trying to ask you out. Maybe I read you wrong? I'm sorry."

"Oh!" Clark's eyes went wide. "I-- no, no, you didn't," he said, looking halfway between surprised and embarrassed. "I didn't think you--"

The blonde woman - Olivia - piped up again, sounding quite annoyed now. "Bru-uuce, come on!"

This time Bruce closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. "I should go," he said, resigned. Then, with a tentative smile that seemed to be begging for Clark to save him from spending the evening with this woman, Bruce asked, "Dinner tonight? Please say yes..."

"Best offer I've had all day," Clark told him.

"Nine o'clock? Or is that too early?" Clark barely had time to get an 'okay' out, that Bruce was already walking away. "I'll meet you at your hotel," he said over his shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll find you."

=:=:=

When Bruce walked into the lobby of the small hotel where Clark was staying, several minutes passed nine o'clock as he'd promised, he was almost surprised to find that Clark was still there waiting for him. Admittedly, waiting might not have been exactly what he was doing - typing furiously on his Blackberry, his eyes going incessantly from the small display to the TV screen he was standing in front of - but the fact that he was there was still a positive thing.

"Sorry I'm late," Bruce said as he walked up to Clark.

Startled, Clark attempted to recover clumsily from almost dropping his phone. "Late? Oh, it's all right. There's just been a new development..."

Bruce's amused smile turned into a disappointed frown. "Should we reschedule, then?"

"Of course not!" Clark took a circular glance around the lobby, then gave Bruce a crooked smile before resuming his typing - at super speed this time. "This should do," he said, putting the Blackberry away in his jacket pocket. "So, where are we off to?"

"There's this little French restaurant less than a block from here. Their wine cellar is all the rave, it seems. I figured it might be worth checking out. Unless you prefer something else?"

"No, no. It sounds perfect." Clark smiled brightly and immediately Bruce knew that this was worth every single second of the very public 'disagreement' he'd had with Olivia about the termination of their 'association'.

Several hours later, however, Bruce would find himself wondering which of that earlier altercation or this dinner date had been the most embarrassing of the two.

It seemed as though every single little thing he had tried in order to impress his date, had resulted in utter and complete failure. His attempt to order dinner in French had only caused the waiter to frown and explain that he didn't speak a word of it. None of the wines he'd selected had turned out to be available, despite most of them being incredibly common. And the entrée that he'd recommended hadn't ended up being very recommendable in the end, nor anything close to what he'd explained it would be.

Though Clark had kept smiling, seeming very unfazed by all of it, by the time they exited the restaurant, Bruce was pretty much convinced that his spur of the moment invitation had been a very regrettable idea. They walked back toward Clark's hotel, mostly in silence, with Clark looking up at the night sky and Bruce down at the pavement, his mind busy trying to find a suitable apology for his repeated blunders. It came as quite a surprise to him when, as they finally reached the hotel's front door, Clark opened it and said, "after you," as though it was already assumed that they were both going inside.

A surprised "Um?" was the most eloquent response Bruce managed to come up with.

"I said, 'after you'... Unless you prefer standing around in front of the hotel instead of coming in?"

Bruce frowned. "I'd have thought you'd be happy to get rid of me, by now."

Clark was frowning as well now. "Why would you think that?" he asked, looking as though he honestly had no idea what Bruce had meant.

Ignoring whatever it was that Bruce was about to say, Clark gently ushered him inside the hotel's lobby and led him down a corridor on the left, stopping in front of the very last room at the end. "It's not exactly the Four Seasons," Clark said as they walked in, "I'm not even sure there's a mini-bar..."

"How could you not know? Haven't you been staying here since the beginning of the conference?"

Clark shrugged. "Technically, yes. But I've had to go back to Metropolis a few times, and there was a situation in Peru, and... well, bottom line is I've only slept here once all week, and I'm leaving tomorrow morning."

"Now that you mention it, you don't look like you've gotten much sleep at all recently," Bruce said, eyeing him carefully. "Maybe I should go. It's late already..."

"I see," Clark said bitterly. He sat on the edge of the dresser, looking at his feet and sighed. "Was it something I said? Or didn't say? I thought we had a nice evening...but apparently I was wrong somehow?"

Still standing near the door, Bruce looked at him in confusion. "Were you not sitting across from me while I kept making a fool of myself all evening?"

Clark's head snapped up, the expression on his face also one of confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Are you just being nice, or you're serious?" At Clark's frown, Bruce went on, "Did you miss the part where I stupidly addressed the waiter in French, or that entrée that wasn't even worth the fancy china it was served on?"

"I don't see how the food could possibly have anything to do with you. Besides, you know...I live on a reporter's salary, I don't eat out in five star restaurants much. I had no idea what to expect of a dish I've never had before, nor was it all that bad anyway." Clark shrugged at that, then in a quieter tone he added, "As for the rest...well, I just thought it was endearing."

"Right."

"You didn't have to try so hard, you know? I realize that you're used to wearing masks all the time and pretending to be someone different, but..." Clark sighed, getting up from where he was sitting. "You were with me. I'd think you'd know me well enough by now to be able to be yourself around me. No?"

Bruce all but snorted at that. "You realize that the closest thing to a myself that I have is Batman, right?"

"So?" Clark shrugged and walked over to the love seat, loosening his tie as he sat down. "I expect you'll tell me I'm probably the only one, but I liked you even before I had any idea you were Bruce Wayne; back when most of us thought you were just Batman all the time."

"You know, there's such a thing as being too easy to please," Bruce said with a half-smile, taking a few tentative steps forward.

Clark shrugged again. "Why? Because a nice evening to me is one where I can actually sit down for a meal? Do you know this is the first time I was ever out on a date that didn't get abruptly interrupted because Superman's attention was required somewhere? That alone makes this a wonderful evening, in my book. Or is it the fact that I like you that surprises you so? And that I thought it was cute that you tried to impress me _avec quelques mots de français_?"

"So what you're saying," Bruce summarized, slowly coming to sit on the love seat, "is that I could have just as well invited you for a cup of coffee in the Batcave after a mission?"

"I would have liked that..."

Bruce's chuckle stayed stuck somewhere in his throat when he saw the look of complete honesty on Clark's face. "Or breakfast in Metropolis, after a long night," Bruce said, without really realizing what it was that he was saying until it was too late and the words were already out. His eyes grew wide as a look of embarrassment swept over his face.

Slowly and in a voice that was quite lower than usual, Clark replied, "Ask me sometime and find out."

The tension in the room became almost palpable as they looked back at one another in silence. Bruce spent a long moment trying to determine whether Clark's smile was meant to be daring, and how an evening that had started out so badly had somehow morphed into this. "Would you have breakfast with me in Metropolis?" he finally asked in a soft, but steady voice.

Clark's reply came as barely more than a whisper. "Any time you like."

"Are you sure?"

"Very," Clark replied, with a long, slow smile. "Aren't you?"

"You realize that most people feel I'm absolutely impossible to live with," Bruce pointed out. It seemed quite a bit more inane a thing to say when put into actual words than it had when the thought had occurred to him, but he still believed that Clark deserved a fair warning, although Bruce guessed that Clark probably knew this just as well as any of their Justice League teammates.

Chuckling lightly, Clark said, "I think we should probably try dating for a while first, and then maybe we can discuss 'living with'."

"You're sure?" Bruce asked again, somehow not completely able to wrap his head around the fact that Clark might actually really want to go out with him; bats and issues notwithstanding.

"Yes."

When Bruce frowned and opened his mouth again, Clark seemed to sense that he was about to ask him yet again if he was certain that this is what he wanted. In an attempt to keep him from doing that, Clark reached a hand to him, cupping his cheek, his thumb out over Bruce's lips.

"Stop asking questions, Bruce," Clark told him softly. "Yes, I'm sure that I'd like to go out with you. If I'd known there was any chance you'd want that too, I might have asked you a long time ago."

Bruce eyes fluttered closed and he let out a long, slow sighing breath. When he opened his eyes again, he found that Clark had moved in close enough that they were just inches apart.

Clark ran his thumb over Bruce's lips slowly and said, "I'm going to kiss you now... but if you ask me why later, I might have to kick you out."

Bruce said nothing, staring into Clark's deep blue eyes, watching as he closed the distance between them. Their lips met then for the first time, hesitantly, almost shyly for a kiss that intensified rapidly, leaving them breathless.

Several kisses, and a long few minutes later, Bruce pulled away and said, "Don't kick me out for asking another question, but..." He smiled mischievously. "You're leaving in the morning, aren't you?" At Clark's nod, Bruce went on, "Would you have breakfast with me before you go?"

Clark smiled back and before leaning in to kiss him again, said, "Why don't you just stick around and find out..."

=> End.


End file.
